An online store in the UK costs anything from nothing upfront plus £19 to £25 a month on Shopify Basic, to £3,995 and upwards for a professionally built shop, and £25,000 or more for a large bespoke store with heavy integrations. Whichever route you take, every sale also carries a card fee of roughly 1.5% to 2% plus 20p to 25p. The build is a one-off; the platform and payment fees are what you pay for as long as the shop trades.
How much does an ecommerce website cost in the UK?
£0 to £25,000+ upfront, depending on who builds it, plus monthly running costs that start around £12 to £25. The upfront figure is mostly about labour. The monthly figure is mostly about the platform and the payment processor, and it scales with how much you sell.
| Route | Upfront | Monthly platform | Card fee per online sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify, you build it | £0 plus your time | £19 to £259 (yearly billing) | From 2% + 25p (Basic) |
| Squarespace, you build it | £0 plus your time | £12 to £79 (yearly billing) | From 2.0% + £0.25, plus 2% on Basic |
| WooCommerce, you build it | £0 for the plugin | Hosting only, roughly £60 to £300 a year | Stripe: 1.5% + 20p standard UK cards |
| Custom Shopify theme, built for you | £2,000 to £15,000 | Shopify plan | Shopify rates |
| Our Premium package | From £3,995, fixed | Hosting and platform | Your chosen processor |
| Large bespoke store | £25,000+ | Varies | Often negotiated |
The build ranges are the same market bands we use on our UK website cost guide and our WordPress vs React vs Shopify comparison. The platform figures come from the providers, as linked in the sections below.
How much does a basic ecommerce website cost?
£19 a month is the floor on Shopify if you pay yearly, or £25 paying monthly, on the Basic plan. That is according to Shopify’s UK pricing page (checked October 2026), which also advertises a 3-day free trial followed by £1 a month for the first 3 months. Squarespace is cheaper on paper at £12 a month yearly on its Basic plan, but Squarespace’s pricing page (checked October 2026) adds a 2% online store transaction fee on Basic, on top of card processing. On a shop doing real volume, that 2% wipes out the saving on the plan within weeks, so Core at £17 a month yearly is the more honest comparison.
“Basic” here means you do the building: choosing a theme, writing product pages, taking photographs, setting up shipping and tax. It is a sensible way to test whether a product sells. It stops being cheap when your own hours have a value, or when the theme cannot do what the shop needs.
How much does an ecommerce website cost per month?
From about £12 a month before you sell anything, rising with every order you take. These are the lines that make up the monthly bill:
| Running cost | What it is | Typical UK figure |
|---|---|---|
| Platform | Shopify or Squarespace plan; nothing for WooCommerce itself | Shopify £19 to £259, Squarespace £12 to £79 (yearly billing) |
| Payments | Charged per sale by the processor | Stripe 1.5% + 20p (standard UK card); Shopify Basic 2% + 25p online |
| Hosting | Included on Shopify and Squarespace; separate for WooCommerce | Roughly £60 to £300 a year for a small site |
| Apps and extensions | Reviews, subscriptions, feeds, shipping labels | Each paid app is its own subscription; Shopify’s POS Pro, for example, is £69 a month per location |
| Domain | Your shop’s address | Roughly £10 to £20 a year |
| Maintenance | Updates, backups, security, mostly on WooCommerce | Your time, or roughly £20 to £100 a month |
To see how the payment line behaves, take a shop selling 200 orders a month at £50 each. On Shopify Basic, each order costs £1.25 in card fees (2% of £50 is £1, plus 25p), so £250 in fees plus the £25 monthly plan: £275 a month. On WooCommerce with Stripe, a standard UK card costs 95p per order, so £190 a month plus hosting. On Squarespace Core, the card rate of 2.0% + £0.25 gives £250 plus the £24 monthly plan. Once a shop is busy, the per-order fee matters far more than the plan, and premium, Amex and overseas cards cost more everywhere.
How much does a Shopify ecommerce website cost in the UK?
£19 to £259 a month on yearly billing, or £25 to £344 paying month to month, with Plus starting at £1,800 a month. These are the figures on Shopify’s UK pricing page (checked October 2026), alongside the online card rates for each plan:
- Basic: £19 a month yearly, £25 monthly. Online cards 2% + 25p, in person 1.7%.
- Grow: £49 yearly, £65 monthly. Online cards 1.7% + 25p, in person 1.6%.
- Advanced: £259 yearly, £344 monthly. Online cards 1.5% + 25p, in person 1.5%.
- Plus: from £1,800 a month. Online cards 1.3% + 25p.
The catch most people miss is the third-party transaction fee. If you take payment through a provider other than Shopify Payments, Shopify charges an extra 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus, on top of whatever that provider charges. The same page lists online Amex and international cards at 3.1% + 25p on Basic.
A professionally built Shopify store adds a one-off build cost on top. For a custom theme, our platform comparison puts that at £2,000 to £15,000.
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
Yes on fees, not always on effort. WooCommerce describes itself as open source and lets you download it free, and its own product page (checked October 2026) says it runs without monthly platform fees. There is no platform cut on each sale either, so the only per-order charge is the processor’s. With Stripe’s UK pricing (checked October 2026) that is 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards, 2.8% + 20p for premium UK cards, 2.5% + 20p for EEA cards and 3.15% + 20p for international cards, with 2% more if currency conversion is needed.
What you take on in exchange is hosting, updates and security. A WooCommerce store is a WordPress site with a shop inside it, and someone has to keep the plugins current, the backups running and the checkout tested after each update. If that someone is you, the saving is real. If you pay for it, compare the maintenance bill against the Shopify plan before deciding. You also own the code and the data, which matters if you ever want to move.
How much does an ecommerce website cost by store size?
| Store | Sensible route | Upfront | Ongoing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Testing a product, a handful of lines | Shopify Basic or Squarespace Core, built yourself | £0 plus your time | £17 to £25 a month plus card fees |
| Small shop that needs to look and rank properly | Professional build on WooCommerce or Shopify | From £3,995 with us; £2,000 to £15,000 for a custom Shopify theme elsewhere | Platform or hosting, card fees, support |
| Growing shop with stock, accounting or courier integrations | Professional build with integrations | Quoted above £3,995, fixed before work starts | As above, plus any paid integrations |
| Large or complex catalogue, custom checkout, several markets | Bespoke build or Shopify Plus | £25,000+ | Shopify Plus from £1,800 a month, or dedicated hosting |
Product count on its own moves the price less than people expect. Fifty products that share one template cost little more to build than ten. What costs money is fifty products that each need different options, bundles or delivery rules.
What pushes the price of an online store up?
- Variations and catalogue rules. Sizes, colours, made-to-order options and bundles all need building and testing. Once a shop passes about 20 products, it also needs search and filters that work, which we cover in the 12 ecommerce features that drive sales.
- Integrations. Connecting the shop to stock control, accounting software, a courier or a marketplace is usually the biggest single line in the quote, because each one has its own data and its own failure cases.
- A custom checkout. On Shopify, a fully customisable checkout is listed only on Plus, from £1,800 a month. On WooCommerce it is possible on any budget, but every change to the checkout needs testing against every payment method you accept.
- Migration. Moving products, customers and order history from an old platform, and redirecting the old URLs so you keep your search rankings, is a job in itself.
- Content and photography. If product descriptions and photos need writing or shooting, that is a separate cost from the build.
How long does it take to build an ecommerce website?
4 to 8 weeks for a typical online store, which is the figure in our guide to how long a website takes to build. The range depends mostly on how many products there are and how complicated the checkout is. Integrations and migrations sit at the top of it. A shop cannot be built properly in a week, because testing payments, emails, stock and shipping alone takes longer.
What does our Premium package include for an online store?
From £3,995 ($4,995), with the price fixed before we start. Our Premium package covers online stores, web applications and bespoke builds with integrations. It includes everything in our Business package (bespoke design, a CMS you can edit yourself, advanced SEO and speed work, and Stripe payments), and adds the e-commerce build, API integrations, a full SEO strategy, priority support and 12 months of support. If a builder plan would genuinely serve you better, we will tell you; our guide to what website builders cost in the UK sets out the prices so you can check.
Send us your product count, the systems the shop needs to talk to and where you want to sell, and we will come back with a fixed price within 24 hours.
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